in-car micturition splash-avoidance product of the day

So you're in the car, at a rock festival, maybe at the theatre or in a job interview, or picking up an MBE from the Queen - anywhere where it's really not convenient or possible to just nip out for a piss. But, the thing is, you really really need one.

Well, help is at hand. No longer do you have to contort yourself in order to piss into a bottle, a process that has a number of drawbacks - for a start it's practically impossible if you're a girl, and you do also have to remember not to wake up some hours later with a raging thirst and greedily guzzle down the lot before remembering. It's no joke, I can tell you. Anyway, now you simply unroll your TravelJohn disposable urinal pouch, deploy the funnel attachment appropriate to your gender, and away you go, quite literally. They are available, along with numerous other useful travel gadgets, from the lavishly stocked Roaming Fox website. There is also an instructional video, for those in any way unclear about how the whole "pissing in a bag" process works. I clicked the link with a certain amount of trepidation, but actually it's all quite clean, no actual piss is involved. It's claimed that each pouch can soak up 28 fluid ounces of liquid, which I calculate to be just under a pint and a half - not bad, but realistically you'd probably have to be quite desperate before pissing in a bag started to seem like a good idea, and, well, you know how it is, once you start you can't stop.

I'm conscious of having said "piss" quite a lot over the course of the last couple of paragraphs; not that I'm apologising as that is essentially what those two paragraphs were about. But it just reminded me of a very minor claim to fame that I have, which is that I am one of a select group of people who have been told off for saying "piss" on BBC Radio. If the dates in the Cheeseracing News page are to be believed (and I'm sure they are) then it was May 2003 when Andy and I appeared on Bob Fischer and Mark Drury's Gobstopper show on BBC Radio Cleveland. Obviously you get a brief pep-talk before you go on, you know, keep it light, no swearing, etc. etc. Anyway, bearing this in mind, I waited until about the third or fourth word I uttered before saying "piss". They took it very well, though, and didn't cut us off or anything.

And while we're on the subject of cheeseracing - it's barbecue season, so get racing! And buy more thongs!